psychological processes underlying wikipedia representations of natural and manmade disasters

Psychological processes underlying Wikipedia

representations of natural and manmade disasters

Michela FerronCenter for Mind/Brain Sciences

University of Trento

Paolo MassaFondazione

Bruno Kessler

[email protected] [email protected]

Anti-Islamic

hate crimes

after 9/11

movies

Legislation & surveillance

Outline

Collective Memories

Wikipedia as a global memory place

Automated natural language techniques Traumatic VS Non traumatic events Old VS recent traumatic events Traumatic events caused by man VS nature

Conclusions

Wikipedia LIWC Traum. - non traum. Old - recentBackground Man - Nature Conclusions

A set of ideas, images, feelings about the past, built through an active process of sense-making through time

Photos: Wikipedia (1, 2, 3, 4)

Lincoln memorial

Memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe

Wahington memorial

Ocklaoma City bombings memorial

Collective Memories


Photos: Wikipedia (1, 2) and Flickr (3, 4)

Kennedy assassination

September 11 attacks

2005 London bombings

2004 IndianTsunami

Traumatic events


After a traumatic event:

Violence increases (Pennebaker and Harber, 1993; FBI national hate crime statistics)

Psychological/health problems increase of negative

emotions (Koss & Kilpatrick, 2001; Stroebe, Hansson, Stroebe, & Schut, 2001)

increase of cognitive activity (Davis & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2001; Pennebaker et al., 2003)

increase of social sharing and social support (Mehl & Pennebaker, 2003; Pyszczynski, Solomon, & Greenberg, 2002; Rimé et al.,1998)

Traumatic eventsshort-term and long-term effects

Anti-Islamic

hate crimes

after 9/11

Collective memories:

Maintain social bonds (Wang, 2008; Irwin-Zarecka, 1994)

Direct behavior (Wang, 2008; Pennebaker et al., 1997; Irwin-Zarecka, 1994)

Are persistent for years and can be at the root of wars, prejudice, cultural identities(Pennebaker et al., 1997)


What happens in Wikipedia



“[…] the online encyclopaedia is a global memory place where locally disconnected participants can express and debate divergent points of view and that this leads to the formation and ratification of shared knowledge that constitutes collective memory.”

(Pentzold, 2009, p. 263)



Automated natural language processing techniques

Goal: to analyze the content of Wikipedia articles about natural and man-made disasters employing automated content analysis tools

Linguistic Inquiry & Word Count (Pennebaker et al.,

2001) searches for words across: Linguistic categories (e.g. pronouns, articles, tenses) Psychological categories (e.g. social, affective, cognitive

processes)

Traumatic VS non traumatic events Temporal focus of old VS recent events


LIWC to get a score for each psychological variable

Psychological processes ExamplesAffective processes Happy, hate, kiss

Positive emotions Love, party, pleasantNegative emotions Hurt, abuse, scary

Anxiety Worried, afraidAnger Kill, aggression, destroySadness Sad, cry, depression

Cognitive processes Cause, acknowledge, admitInsight Think, assume, interpretCausation Because, depend, elicitDiscrepancy Should, could, ifTentative Maybe, apparently, supposeCertainty Always, absolutely, clearInhibition Block, abstain, avoidInclusive And, add, alongExclusive But, either, without

Social processes Mate, guy, boyFamily Daughter, brother, dadFriends Buddy, friend, mateHumans Adult, children, girl

Traumatic and non traumatic eventsHypotheses


Traumatic and non traumatic eventsData

Wikipedia’s categories (“Events by topic”), History Central and Information Britain

66 articles about traumatic events (e.g. September 11 attacks, 7 July 2005 London bombings, Chernobyl disaster)

40 articles about non traumatic events (e.g. Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, Woodstock Festival, Super Bowl XXXVIII)


Higher presence in articles about traumatic events of:

negative emotions cognitive processes social processes

In articles about non traumatic events:

positive emotions

Psychological processes ExamplesAffective processes Happy, hate, kiss

Positive emotions Love, party, pleasantNegative emotions Hurt, abuse, scary




Traumatic and non traumatic eventsHypotheses


Traumatic and non traumatic eventsAnalysis

1 negative emotion

14 total words

Arcsine transformation T-tests for indipendent samples


negative emotions

Traumatic and non traumatic eventsResults

All differences in the graphs are statistically significant


Temporal focus of old and recent traumatic events: Data & Analysis

Articles in their early stage (after 500 revisions) Temporal focus more evident Many words per article

Out of 55 articles 26 about events happened before 2001 (e.g. John F.

Kennedy assassination) 29 about events happened after 2001 (e.g. 2011

Tohoku earthquake and tsunami)

LIWC: linguistics categories (past, present and future tenses)

Arcsine transformation and t-tests for independent samples


Temporal focus of old and recent traumatic events: Hypotheses & Results

HP: higher presence of past tense in old events, higher presence of present/future tenses in recent events

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*

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LIWC applied to Wikipedia

LIWC is effective in detecting

Differences in content referred to psychological processes emerging from articles about traumatic and non traumatic events

Differences in the temporal focus of articles about old and recent traumatic events


How people remember traumatic events: Understand the consequences on the physical and

psychological health of people and communities

Differences in the psychological processes: First step toward the understanding and the

prediction of trauma, typical responses to it, and short and long-term effects

Empirically validate theoretical findings in Wikipedia


Natural and human-made traumatic events


Traumatic events can be very different

Theoretical reasons to distinguish between natural and human-made traumatic events

Literature: human accidents may have longer and more insidious effects of physical and psychological health: negative emotions; nervousness and anxiety (Cohn et al., 2004;

Adler, 1943)

psychological and work-related problems (Leopold and Dillon, 1963; Henderson and Bostock, 1977; Ploeger, 1972)

depression, anxiety, personality changes (Titchener and Kapp, 1976)

sleep disturbances and psychiatric problems (Gleser et al., 1981; Gleser et al., 1978)

war-related dreams and aggravated assaults (Pennebaker and Harber, 1993)


Uncontrollable helplessness

Loss of control stress arousal


Baum et al., 1986

Natural disasters Human disasters


September 11 attacks

2004 IndianTsunami

Articles in their early stage (after 500 revisions)

Out of 55 articles with at least 500 revisions 36 about events caused by man (e.g. “Fort Hood

shooting”, “2011 Norway attacks”) Wikipedia’s categories, e.g. “Assassinations”, “Terrorist

incidents” 19 about events caused by nature (e.g. “2004

Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami”, “2010 Haiti earthquake”) Wikipedia’s categories, e.g. “2008 Atlantic Hurricane

Season”, “1993 natural disasters”

Natural and human-made traumatic eventsData


Affective processes Human-made disasters: loss of control (distress) higher

anxiety, anger Natural disasters: uncontrollable (helplessness) higher

sadness

Cognitive processes Human-made disasters: loss of control higher cognitive

processes

Social processes Human-made disasters: increased orientation toward others

+ more references to people higher social processes

Natural and human-made traumatic eventsHypotheses


Natural and human-made traumatic eventsResults

Affective processes Happy, hate, kissPositive emotions Love, party, pleasantNegative emotions Hurt, abuse, scary


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Human-made traumatic events: more anxiety,

anger (blame)

Natural disasters: more sadness

(passive behavior)




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Human-made traumatic events: need for

explanation is critical (unexpected loss of control)

Natural disasters: need for

explanation is less pressing (nature is uncontrollable)




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Human-made traumatic events: higher social

orientation? more

references to people (bomber’s family or social relations)


Difficult definition of human-made and natural disasters Wikipedia’s categories But the distinction is not always clear-cut (“2011

Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami”)

LIWC and other automated techniques Limitations (psychological categories are

subjective and context-dependent) Know your data (noise caused by bots, vandalism,

templates)

Considerations


Different psychological and sensemaking processes underlying users editing activity Specific patterns of emotional language

Conclusions: Take-home message

anger, anxiety

sadness

Man-made disasters

Natural disasters

Arousal

Valence

negative

positive

high activation

low activation

stressfulfocused anger

heavier effects

passive responses


Thank you!

Questions? Suggestions?

psychological processes underlying wikipedia representations of natural and manmade disasters

Education

scaryabout traumatic

collective memories

traumatic eventsshortterm

withouttraumatic events

afraid liwc

old recentman

articles negative emotionshurt

global memory placewhere